Nod to Bilaspur's Rs 4,500 crore Smart City plan amid Cong opposition

BILASPUR: A proposal worth Rs 4,500 crore for Smart City project was passed in the general body meeting of mayor-in-council (MIC) of Bilaspur Municipal Corporation, on Tuesday. Earlier, the proposal was worth Rs 3,500 crore, which was hiked by Rs 1,000 crore on the suggestion of corporation chairman Ashok Vidhani.

As discussions opened, Vidhani justified increasing project by Rs 1,000 crore on the grounds that while state capital Raipur had forwarded a plan for developing smart city in 800 hectares of land, Bilaspur's bid is on a much larger area - more than 1,000 hectares and hence the cost should be Rs 4,500 crore.

Riding on BJP majority, the proposal was passed despite Congress corporators' opposition. Congress said corporation could even go for enhanced project cost, but party's main contention was where would the funds come from.

Congress said Centre will provide Rs 500 crore and state government will pitch in with Rs 250 crore. That will add up to only Rs 750 crore.

So, it wanted to know what would be the source of remaining sum of money. They wondered as to why a big company worth its name will invest a huge amount in Bilaspur. And even if someone did come forward, the same will be charged from residents of the city and the whole exercise will become counter productive.

Congress corporators also refused to take oath that no more additional funds will be demanded for Smart City project. They said that if in future, cost of project did go up due to any reason, they do not want to be bound by such an unjustified oath. The corporators were also irked, as they did not get copies of the said project proposal on time. In fact, they had to resort to a day-long dharna before they were eventually provided the copies after 7 in the evening.

In his reply, mayor Kishor Rai did not come up with a convincing answer with regard to source of additional funding for the project. He mentioned some central schemes like Amrit Mission and SBM while adding that funds released for these schemes will be utilized for the project. He talked about some works with regard to the project being executed through PPP model and added that experts from outside were carrying out some research in this connection. He said that this will take care of additional funds for the project.